The Rise of David Levinsky

by Abraham Cahan

CHAPTER V

I LOST track of Loeb before the train reached Chicago, but about a fortnight later, when I was in St. Louis, I encountered him again. It was on a Monday morning. With sample-case in hand, I was crossing one of the busiest spots in the shopping district with preoccupied mien, when he hailed me: "Hello, Levinsky! How long have you been here?"

"Just arrived," I answered

"Where are you stopping?"

I named my hotel. I could see that he was taking note of the fact that I was crossing the street to the Great Bazar, one of the largest department stores in St. Louis

"I am going to tackle Huntington this morning," I said, with mild defiance

"Are you? Wish you luck," he remarked, quite gravely. "You'll find him a pretty tough customer, though." He was apparently too busy to indulge in raillery. "Wish you luck," he repeated, and was off

Huntington was the new head of the cloak-and-suit department in the Great Bazar, and in this capacity he was said to be doing wonders. It was not true that I had just arrived. I had been in the city nearly three days, and the day before I had mailed a letter to Huntington upon which I was building great hopes. I knew but too well that he was a "tough customer," my previous efforts to obtain an interview with him—in New York as well as here, in St.

Louis—having proven futile. I was too small a fish for him. Nor, indeed, was the Great Bazar the only large department store in the country whose door was closed to me. Barring six or seven such stores, in as many cities, with which I was in touch largely through the good offices of Eaton, my business was almost confined to small concerns. Eaton had given me letters to many other large firms, but these had brought no result. For one thing, my Russian name was against me. As I have said before, the American business world had not yet learned to take our people seriously

And so I had written Huntington, making a special plea for a few minutes of his "most valuable time." All I asked for was an opportunity "to point out some specific conditions that enable our house to reduce the cost of production to an unheard-of level." If he had only read that letter! I had bestowed so much effort on it, and I gave myself credit for having made a fine job of it

Arriving at the big store, I made my way to the sample-rooms. I did so by a freight-elevator, the passenger-cars being denied to men carrying sample-cases. In the waiting-room of the buyers' offices I found four or five men, all of them accompanied by colored porters who carried their sample-cases for them. A neat-looking office-boy, behind a small desk, was rocking on the hind legs of his chair with an air of supreme indifference.

"Will you take it in?" I said to him, handing him my card. "I want to see Mr. Huntington."

"Mr. Huntington is busy," he answered, mechanically, without ceasing to rock.

"Take it in, please," I whispered, imploringly. But he took no heed of me.

Had I been the only salesman in the room, I should have offered him a bribe.

As it was, there was nothing to do but to take a seat and wait

"These office-boys treat salesmen like so many dogs," I muttered, addressing myself to the man by my side

He sized me up, without deigning an answer.

Other salesmen made their appearance, some modestly, others with a studied air of confidence, loudly greeting those they knew. The presence of so many rivals and the frigidity of the office-boy made my heart heavy. I was still a novice at the game, and the least mark of hostility was apt to have a depressing effect on my spirits, though, as a rule, it only added fuel to my ambition

Some of the other salesmen were chatting and cracking jokes, for all the world like a group of devoted friends gathered for some common purpose. The ostensible meaning of it all was that the competition in which they were engaged was a "mere matter of business," of civilized rivalry; that it was not supposed to interfere with their friendship and mutual sense of fair play. But I thought that all this was mere pretense, and that at the bottom of their hearts each of them felt like wiping the rest of us off the face of the earth

Presently the office-boy gathered up our cards and disappeared behind a door. He was gone quite a few minutes. They were hours to me. I was in the toils of suspense, in a fever of eagerness and anxiety. As I sat gazing at the door through which the office-boy had vanished, Mr. Huntington loomed in my imagination large and formidable, mighty and stern. To be admitted to his presence was at this moment the highest aim of my life. Running through my anxious mind were various phrases from the letter I had sent him. Some of these seemed to be highly felicitous. The epistle was bound to make an impression. "Provided he has read it," I thought, anxiously. "But why should he have bothered with it? He probably receives scores like it. No, he has not read it."

The next moment it became clear to me that the opening sentence of my plea was sure to have arrested Huntington's attention, that he had read it to the end, and would let me not only show him my samples, but explain matters as well. Of a sudden, however, it struck me, to my horror, that I had no recollection of having signed that letter of mine

A middle-aged woman with a Jewish cast of features passed through the waiting-room. I knew that she was Huntington's assistant and she was apparently going to his compartment of the sample-room. The fact that she had a Jewish face seemed encouraging. Not that the Jews I had met in business had shown me more leniency or cordiality than the average Gentile.

Nor was an assistant buyer, as a rule, in a position to do something for a salesman unless his samples had been referred to her by her superior.

Nevertheless, her Jewish features spoke of kinship to me. They softened the grimness of the atmosphere around me

Finally the office-boy came back. My heart beat violently. Pausing at his desk, with only two or three of all the cards he had taken to the potentate, he looked at them, as he called out, with great dignity: "Mr. Huntington will see Mr. Sallinger, Mr. Stewart, and Mr. Feltman."

My heart sank. I suspected that my poor card had never reached its destination, that the boy had simply thrown it away, together with some of the other cards, perhaps, on his way to Mr. Huntington's room. Indeed, I knew that this was the fate of many a salesman's card

The boy called out Sallinger's name again, this time admitting him to the inner precincts. All those whose cards had been ignored except myself—there were about a dozen of them—picked up their sample-cases or had their porters do so and passed out without ado. As for me, I simply could not bring myself to leave

"He didn't mark my card, did he?" I said to the boy

"No, sir," he snapped, with a scowl.

When I reached the street I paused for some minutes, as though glued to the sidewalk. Was it all over? Was there no hope of my seeing Huntington? My mind would not be reconciled to such an outcome. I stood racking my brains for some subterfuge by which I might be able to break through the Chinese wall that separated me from the great Mogul, and when I finally set out on my way to other stores I was still brooding over the question. I visited several smaller places that day and I made some sales, but all the while I was displaying my samples, quoting prices, arguing, cajoling, explaining, jesting, the background of my brain never ceased bothering about Huntington and devising means of getting at him

The next morning I was in Huntington's waiting-room again. I fared no better than on the previous occasion. I tried to speak to Huntington on the telephone, but I only succeeded in speaking to a telephone-girl and she told me that he was busy

"Please tell Mr. Huntington I have a job to close out, a seventeen-dollar garment for seven fifty."

"Mr. Huntington is busy."

At this moment it seemed to me that all talk of American liberty was mere cant

I asked the manager of the hotel at which I was stopping to give me a letter of introduction to him, and received a polite no for an answer. I discovered the restaurant where Huntington was in the habit of taking lunch and I went there for my next noon-hour meal for the purpose of asking him for an interview. I knew him by sight, for I had seen him twice in New York, so when he walked into the restaurant there was a catch at my heart. He was a spare little man with a face, mustache, and hair that looked as though he had just been dipped in a pail of saffron paint. He was accompanied by another man. I was determined first to let him have his lunch and then, on his way out, to accost him. Presently, lo and behold! Loeb entered the restaurant and walked straight up to Huntington's table, evidently by appointment. I nearly groaned. I knew that Loeb had a spacious sample-room at his hotel, with scores of garments hung out, and even with wire figures.

It was clear that Huntington had visited it or was going to, while I could not even get him to hear my prices. Was that fair? I saw the law of free competition, the great law of struggle and the survival of the fittest, defied, violated, desecrated

I discovered the residence of Huntington's assistant, and called on her. I had offered presents to other assistant buyers and some of them had been accepted, so I tried the same method in this case—with an unfortunate result. Huntington's assistant not only rejected my bribe, but flew into a passion to boot, and it was all my powers of pleading could do to have her promise me not to report the matter to her principal

I learned that Huntington was a member of the Elks and a frequenter of their local club-house, but, unfortunately, I was not a member of that order

I went to the Yiddish-speaking quarter of St. Louis, made the acquaintance of a man who was ready to sell me, on the instalment plan, everything under the sun, from a house lot and a lottery ticket to a divorce, and who undertook to find me (for ten dollars) somebody who would give me a "first-class introduction" to Huntington; but his eager eloquence failed to convince me. I had my coat pressed by a Jewish tailor whose place was around the corner from Huntington's residence and who pressed his suits for him. I had a shave in the barber shop at which Huntington kept his shaving-cup. I learned something of the great man's family life, of his character, ways, habits. It proved that he lived quite modestly, and that his income was somewhere between sixty and seventy dollars a week. Mine was three times as large. That I should have to rack my brains, do detective work, and be subjected to all sorts of humiliation in an effort to obtain an audience with him seemed to be a most absurd injustice

I was losing precious time, but I could not bring myself to get away from St. Louis without having had the desired interview. Huntington's name was buzzing in my mind like an insect. It was a veritable obsession

My talk with his barber led me to a bowling-alley. Being a passionate bowler, the cloak-buyer visited the place for an hour or so three or four times a week. As a consequence of this discovery I spent two afternoons and an evening there, practising a game which I had never even heard of before

My labors were not thrown away. The next evening I saw Huntington and a son of his in the place and we bowled some games together. Seen at close range, the cloak-buyer was a commonplace-looking fellow. I thought that he did not look much older than his son, and that both of them might have just stepped out from behind a necktie counter. I searched the older man's countenance for marks of astuteness, initiative, or energy, without being able to find any. But he certainly was a forcible bowler

When he made a sensational hit and there broke out a roar of admiration I surpassed all the other bystanders in exuberance. "I must not overdo it, though," I cautioned myself. "He cannot be a fool. He'll see through me." His son was apparently very proud of him, so I said to the young man: "Anybody can see your father is an energetic man."

"You bet he is," the young man returned, appreciatively. I led him on and he told me about his father's baseball record. I dropped a remark about his being "successful in business as well as in athletics" and wound up by introducing myself and asking to be introduced to his father. It was a rather dangerous venture, for the older Huntington was apt to remember my name, in which case my efforts might bring me nothing but a rebuff. Anyhow, I took the plunge and, to my great delight, he did not seem ever to have heard of me

Ten minutes later the three of us were seated over glasses of lager in the beer-garden with which the bowling-alley was connected. I told them that I was from New York and that I had come to St. Louis partly on business and partly to visit a sister who lived in their neighborhood. The elder Huntington said something of the rapid growth of New York, of its new high buildings. His English was curiously interspersed with a bookish phraseology that seemed to be traceable to the high-flown advertisements of his department in the newspapers. I veered the conversation from the architectural changes that had come over New York to changes of an ethnographic character.

"Our people, immigrants from Russia, I mean, are beginning to play a part in the business life of the city," I said

"Are you a Russian?" he asked

"I used to be," I answered, with a smile. "I am an American now."

"That's right."

"You see, we are only new-comers. The German Jews began coming a great many years ahead of us, but we can't kick, either."

"I suppose not," he said, genially.

"For one thing, we are the early bird that gets, or is bound to get, the worm. I mean it in a literal sense. Our people go to business at a much earlier hour and go home much later. There is quite a number of them in your line of business, too."

"I know," he said. "Of course, the 'hands' are mostly Russian Hebrews, but some of them have gone into manufacturing, and I don't doubt but they'll make a success of it."

"Why, they are making a success of it, Mr. Huntington."

I felt that I was treading on risky gound, that he might smell a rat at any moment; but I felt, also, that when he heard why manufacturers of my type were able to undersell the big old firms he would find my talk too tempting to cut it short. And so I rushed on. I explained that the Russian cloak-manufacturer operated on a basis of much lower profits and figured down expenses to a point never dreamed of before; that the German-American cloak-manufacturer was primarily a merchant, not a tailor; that he was compelled to leave things to his designer and a foreman, whereas his Russian competitor was a tailor or cloak-operator himself, and was, therefore, able to economize in ways that never occurred to the heads of the old houses.

"I see," Huntington said, with a queer stare at me

"Besides, our people content themselves with small profits," I pursued. "We are modest."

Here I plagiarized an epigram I had heard from Meyer Nodelman: "Our German co-religionists will spend their money before they have made it, while we try to make it first."

I expected Huntington to smile, but he did not. He was listening with sphinx-like gravity. When I paused, my face and my ears burning, he said, with some embarrassment: "What is your business, may I ask?" "I am in the same line. Cloaks." "Are you?" With another stare

Tense with excitement, I said, with daredevil recklessness: "The trouble is that successful men like yourself are so hard to get at, Mr.

Huntington."

"What do you mean?" he said, with a cryptic laugh

I made a clean breast of it

Perhaps he was flattered by my picture of him as an inaccessible magnate; perhaps he simply appreciated the joke of the thing and the energy and tenacity I had brought to it, but he let me narrate the adventure in detail.

I told him the bare truth, and I did so with conscious simple-heartedness, straining every nerve to make a favorable impression

As he listened he repeatedly broke into laughter, and when I had finished he said to his son: "Sounds like a detective story, doesn't it?"

But his demeanor was still enigmatic, and I anxiously wondered whether I impressed him as an energetic business man or merely as an adventurer, a crank, or even a crook

"All I ask for is an opportunity to show you my samples, Mr.
Huntington," I said.

"Well," he answered, deliberately, "there can be no harm in that." And after a pause, "You've bagged your game so far as that's concerned."

And he merrily made me an appointment for the next morning

About a month later I came across Loeb on Broadway, New York

"By the way," he said, in the course of our brief talk, with a twinkle in his eve, "did you sell anything to Huntington?" "Huntington? St. Louis? Why, he really is a hard man to reach," I answered, glumly.

At that very moment my cutters were at work on a big order from Huntington, largely for copies from Loeb's styles. I had filled a test order of his so promptly and so completely to his satisfaction, and my prices were so overwhelmingly below those in Loeb's bill, that the St. Louis buyer had wired me a "duplicate" for eight hundred suits

There was a buyer in Cleveland, a bright, forceful little man who would not let a salesman quote his price until he had made a guess at it. His name was Lemmelmann. He was an excellent business man and a charming fellow, but he had a weakness for parading his ability to estimate the price of a garment "down to a cent." The salesmen naturally humored this ambition of his and every time he made a correct guess they would applaud him without stint, and I would follow their example. On one occasion I came to Cleveland with two especially prepared compliments in my mind

"Every human being has five senses," I said to the little buyer. "You have six, Mr. Lemmelmann. You were born with a price sense besides the ordinary five."

"My, but it's a good one," he returned, jovially

"Yes, you have more senses than anybody else, Mr.
Lemmelmann," I added.

"You're the most sensible man in the world."

"Why—why, you can send stuff like that to Puck or Judge and get a five-dollar bill for it. How much will you charge me? Will that do?" he asked, handing me a cigar

The two compliments cemented our friendship. At least, I thought they did

Another buyer, in Atlanta, Georgia, had a truly wonderful memory. He seemed to remember every sample he had ever seen—goods, lines, trimmings, price, and all. He was an eccentric man. Sometimes he would receive a crowd of salesmen in rapid succession, inspect their merchandise and hear their prices without making any purchase. Later, sometimes on the same day, he would send out orders for the "numbers" that had taken his fancy

While showing him my samples one morning I essayed to express amazement at his unusual memory. But in this case I mistook my man

"If everybody had your marvelous memory there would be little work for bookkeepers," I jested

Whereupon he darted an impatient glance at me and growled: "Never mind my memory. You sell cloaks and suits, don't you? If you deal in taffy, you'll have to see the buyer of the candy department."